Chapter 2
Magic for me has always been in a kitchen. It’s the sound of a sizzling pan. It’s the satisfaction of a perfect flavor on your tongue.
I’ve never found a landscape enchanting, for crying out loud.
But looking out the window of the taxi as we wind through southern Tuscany, I have to admit that there’s something beguiling about the countryside here.
It’s a landscape of pointy conifers, undulating low hills, sunshine-dappled sunflowers, and the silver-green breeze of the olive trees.
Top-heavy, thin-trunked trees lean, as though they’re deciding whether to follow the wind.
Wild brush lines both sides of the road, stretching up as though trying futilely to touch the sky.
My image of Tuscany was always fancy vineyards and cities like Florence or Siena.
But Anita explained to me that southern Tuscany, Maremma, is more cowboy and cattle country than an elite enclave.
It’s farms, olive groves, and wooded preserves flowing south from the base of the volcanic Mount Amiata.
It’s bracketed by wild rocky seashores and ancient walled Etruscan towns on the hilltops.
An hour and half out from Rome, we reach the town of Manciano, and the drive starts to become comically hemmed in.
I’m surprised this tiny car is gunning up these inclines and navigating sharp turns around stone walls that look like they’ve survived a millennium.
But somehow, the taxi driver makes it, and we come to a stop in front of a small house.
It’s made of patched brick and has an imposing filigreed wooden doorway with a modern doorbell, surrounded by vines covered in bluebells.
“Andiamo,” he says as he gets out of the car, then pulls my single giant suitcase from the trunk. I guess this is the address.
I look on the door and see an envelope taped to the front, with Kit Roth scribbled in hurried cursive. I open the envelope, and inside is a set of keys: a large one for the front door and another labeled only “#3.”
Is this place really so rural that you can leave keys taped to a doorway and no one thinks twice about it?
I say “Grazie” to the driver and open the door. Inside, stone steps lead up an unlit stairwell. I haul my suitcase until I’m on the third-floor landing and unlock the door marked #3.
The apartment is small but clean. The floors are a gray tile, and the walls are covered with framed posters of old Italian films. Anita’s cousin has a friend who has a friend who’s been looking for a subletter.
Apparently this apartment is around the corner from the restaurant owned by her nonna, Gia.
For a hastily planned escape, this is as good a place as any to crash.
A door in the living room opens onto a small balcony that puts the whole neighborhood in perspective.
That entire gorgeous landscape we drove past opens up in front of me, with low hills dotting the distance.
I can see across a lot of the town now, all the burnt orange roof tiles topped with satellite dishes, a stark contrast of old and new.
The air is clear, and the memory of the smell of New York is already fuzzy.
I’m some mix of exhausted jet lag and wired adventurer, so I figure I should get outside before I fall asleep.
Even with my dislike of coffee, I bet a jolt of caffeine from an espresso would do wonders for me.
And then maybe I can find my way to Gia, since Anita said she would be in the restaurant all day.
Sure enough, around the corner is a building with Pasta Fresca written in bold red letters on a white sign. But I figure I’ll walk around town for a bit and get my bearings before going inside.
Manciano is quiet, and the small streets are a serene place to meander.
The town is beautiful, but it’s not a fairy-tale fiction.
It’s lived in. It’s ancient stone next to dented stucco.
Wisteria and those bluebells line so many of the buildings, but they also exist next to a neighbor with seventeen kinds of cacti out front in an array of overwrought pottery.
It’s not the Disneyland frozen-in-time vibes of so many of the small but overtouristed European cities these days.
It’s charming because it’s imperfect and still alive.
I grab an espresso at a coffee shop counter, downing it in one sip to avoid the flavor.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. Fucking John again. I didn’t reply to him a few days ago when he texted, but apparently he didn’t get the hint.
S?o Paolo is interested. Give me a call when you have a sec.
Maybe it’s the jet lag, but I don’t have the patience to ignore him anymore. I hit the call button, and he answers on the first ring.
“This isn’t normal,” I spit out.
“Good morning to you too,” he says. It’s early morning in New York, but he’s always awake and sharp, like a shark who never stops swimming.
“It’s not normal to break up with someone and then the next day start talking about work like nothing happened. You’re assuming I’m just . . . fine?!”
There’s a moment of silence. “Aren’t you?”
“No!”
“You want us to give it a real go?”
I open my mouth, surprised. “No?”
He chuckles, affectionate, and it makes me want to claw his eyes out.
“The reason you’re not fine,” he continues, “is because of the state of your restaurant, not because you’re upset about us breaking up.
You’re pissed at me because you don’t like being dumped.
But that’s not the thing that matters to you here. ”
I stay silent because it stings that he’s being so harsh and that it’s so true. But I hear him sigh, and I know from the tone of it he’s not looking to pick a fight. It’s another reason we always went along so smoothly—we never had enough skin in the game to need to fight.
“It’s fine, Kit,” he says softly. “I knew who you were when we got together.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I snap.
“The fact that I could even use the phrase ‘give it a real go’ after five years should be enough. You’ve never been in it.”
“Oh, and you were?”
“I did us both a favor,” he says, and I’m surprised to hear a glimmer of sadness in his voice. “People shouldn’t simply coast along because it’s easy.”
“That’s not—”
“We’re not in love with each other. So can’t it just be fine?
Can’t we call it and keep working together and do what we do best?
Because that’s the part we both actually do love, and we’re damn good at it.
” He pauses, but I’m too stunned to say anything.
So he barrels on. “Let me figure out getting the restaurant fixed. Let me figure out places for you to work this summer so you’re not bored.
The restaurant group will get a chance to promote you and bring attention back here when you reopen. ”
He lets the silence sit now. And I feel . . . gross. Because the truth is, he’s not wrong. About any of it.
And that’s the part that feels the grossest. Did I let passion for my work completely overtake the need for passion for anything else? Did my ambition and my love of New York let me autopilot other parts of my life to the point where the assumption is I’ll steer wherever I’m told?
I look around the town surrounding me, ancient and opposite of everywhere I was mere hours ago. And I’ve never been more convinced I’ve made the right choice.
“You can get the restaurant back in order,” I finally say, determination steeling me. “But I’m not doing bullshit pop-ups for a bunch of rich dudes across the world so I can be paraded around like a company asset. I’m working for Anita’s grandmother for the summer.”
“Anita’s grandmother?” I so wish I could see his face right now. “Where the hell is she? Some random town in Italy?”
“I’m going to learn how to make pasta.”
“Oh, this is some Eat, Pray, Love bullshit?” he says, all the kumbaya rationality of his previous attempts to placate me clearly torched by my refusal to go along with what he wants. “You can’t force it, Kit. You’re not going to suddenly find peace in a pasta bowl.”
“You’re such a condescending asshole,” I retort. “Let me know when my restaurant is ready for my return. Until then, don’t text me again. I’m in Maremma.”
“You’re already—”
But I don’t wait to hear him finish. I gleefully hang up the phone and make my way back through the town.
Until I’m standing in front of Pasta Fresca again.
The door is open when I arrive. Anita wasn’t kidding when she said it was simple.
There are two small wooden tables outside and six inside.
The walls are all that same mismatched, slightly crumbling brick I’ve seen on so many buildings here.
There’s a big fan, ugly mustard-color curtains, and bottles of wine lining racks on the wall.
Drying ingredients like salami and garlic hang from the rafters like extra decor.
“Are you coming back, or what?” I hear a forceful voice call out from the kitchen in an Italian-inflected accent, but with clear control over her English.
I walk over to a swinging door and peek my head in.
The smallest, oldest woman I’ve ever seen is rolling out pasta dough on a long wooden table that’s dusted with flour.
A hand-cranked pasta machine is bolted to the end of the table, and rollers and stamps for various pasta shapes are strewn around.
There’s one large gas range, a lot of hanging pots and pans, and more bags of flour than I’ve ever seen, stacked on every shelf and in every corner.
“Nonna Gianna?”
“Just call me Gia,” she says curtly, then takes a moment to divide the dough into sections. “So, you made it in one piece?”
“Yup.”
She stops working and looks me up and down. “You don’t look like a great chef,” she mutters, as much to herself as to me, wiping her hands on the weathered white apron she’s wearing that goes almost to her knees.
I like that she’s already giving me shit. That, at least, makes this tiny room feel like a kitchen. “Not up to your standard?” I give back.
“Anyone ever tell you you kind of resemble a bug?”
I snort a laugh. “Any bug in particular?”
She actually takes a moment to think about it, and I respect that. “What do you call those ones, the long ones with the big eyes that pray?”
“Praying mantis?”
She snaps her fingers and points at me, like I’ve solved the mystery.
I have to admit, from that level of bluntness, she’s a real chef. So there’s only one way to play this and survive.
“Maybe I look long to you because you’re so short?” The tone is saccharine, but the intention is clear.
She shrugs and starts to take one section of dough over to the pasta machine. “You’re still tall for a girl, even if I am a raisin at this point.”
At that, a laugh can’t help but burst out, and she rolls her eyes, as though I’m enjoying this too much. To prove the point, she immediately hands me a bag of onions.
“Dice these, as small as you can. Your station can be over there.” She points to a small table crammed in the corner. It’s even lower than hers, so I know she’s aware it’ll be too short for me.
But I’m okay with a bit of hazing. This is nothing.
I pull a wooden cutting board toward me (there’s no plastic anywhere, and I’m definitely not going to be the fool who asks her) and lay out my knife roll. I pull out my chef’s knife and quickly sharpen it on my steel. Then I get started.
As I dice onions (then tomatoes; then pick thyme; then shell pistachios), I watch her work.
Her knobbled fingers must be hurting, but she shows no sign of slowing down.
She’s a machine. She hand cranks pasta into perfect flat sheets.
She stuffs and stamps out ravioli. She extrudes long noodles from another hand-cranked machine.
She watches over sauces that are slowly simmering on the range, richness and fresh herbs colliding to permeate the heavy air.
We pass a few hours like that, listening to a radio tuned to a classic station of Italian songs from another era. She only speaks to me to give me a new task.
The funniest part is that occasionally I hear people walk into the restaurant and open a fridge that must be in the dining room. They shout some version of “Thanks!” in Italian and then walk out without coming into the kitchen to bother her.
I guess I’ll have to figure out what that’s about on another day, since she doesn’t seem inclined to say anything about it.
Finally at around six she looks up at an old clock on the wall and wipes her hands on her apron.
“Customers come starting at nineteen o’clock. Now we take a break and I smoke.”
She walks out, and I hurry to wash my hands and follow her. She sits at one of the outdoor tables and beckons me to do the same. It’s still warm outside, even if there’s a shadow from the sun beginning to dip down.
“So what’s the schedule?” I ask, shaking my head no when she offers me a cigarette. I’ve never understood chefs who smoke—why would you possibly want to dull your palate?—but so many do. It’s funny seeing this tiny, overworked little grandma smoke, though.
“I come in at noon sharp. I make the pasta for pickups and also get some of the dough ready for later. Then we do dinner prep, as you saw today.”
“Oh, so you take orders for fresh pasta to go as well?” Maybe that explains the fridge raiders.
“There’s no orders,” she scoffs, her deep voice now making more sense, as a smoker. “I make what I make and that’s it. People come and look in the fridge, and whoever gets it first gets it. They leave cash in the drawer. Then we do dinner and we cook until we’re out. Simple.”
“What if someone has a request or an allergy?”
She scoffs again and then takes a big drag of her cigarette. “We don’t do this here.”
I get the sense there’s not going to be any more explanation than that. So I change the subject.
“Do you live in this neighborhood too?”
“No. Cassero’s not for me. Too busy. I like the countryside.”
“Cassero?” I ask, sidestepping the humor of an almost entirely empty area being described as “too busy.”
“Si. Manciano has different rioni . . .” She pauses, clearly trying to come up with the English word.
Her English is so perfect that aside from her accent, I’ve almost forgotten I’m in another country.
“Neighborhoods? Or districts? I don’t know.
Anyway, the rione inside the medieval walls is called Cassero, after the large tower. ”
“Is it a good area to live in?” I ask, the realization hitting me of how little I actually know about this place I’ve moved to for the next few months.
“You know, the old town of Manciano has historically been called the ‘Spy of Maremma,’” she says with a smirk, butting out her cigarette on the ground as she stands up.
“It’s because from up on this hill, you can see practically all of Maremma, all the way to the sea on one side and all the way to Mount Amiata on the other.
But I think the name’s more fitting because everyone’s in everyone else’s business all the time. ”
At that she gets up and walks back inside.
I guess break time is over.